Over my 33 year career (so far) in organomodified silicones, customers have occasionally asked me for green, natural or sustainable products. The early requests were infrequent, usually for very specific circumstances, and somewhat vague with the askers often uncertain what their choice of terminology meant. Recently, these requests are coming more frequently and the queriers clearly want products that are not based on petroleum. The origins for these are the beliefs that petroleum is non-sustainable long term and that a fossil fuel economy is harmful to the Earth we all call home.
In the last two years it seems the “Covidity of Errors” that we have lived through has dramatically reinforced this market driver. Whether it was facing one’s mortality or seeing first-hand how inadequately large-scale global problems are dealt with by society, the pandemic has turned this market driver into a market need. While there are likely other factors that have “driven this driver”, today’s reality is that people want products made from botanical plants instead of petroleum plants.